Curious and Courageous: The Intellectual as an Activist

Edward Said provides compelling Representations of the Intellectual in his work of the same name. Within the text Said begins by presenting a goal, perhaps a criteria, for the intellectual: “The attempt to hold to a universal and single standard as a theme plays an important role in my account of the intellectual” (xiii). Said continues with his “characterizations of the intellectual” (xvi), providing a second criteria, “the intellectual tries to speak truth to power” (xvi). With this Said challenges the would-be intellectual with an underlying principle—universality—to ensure honesty and consistency in order to appeal to “as wide a public as possible” (xiii), and a simple, yet frightening, obligation—to confront authority—“to question patriotic nationalism, corporate thinking, and a sense of class, racial or gender privilege” (xiii). It is this duel responsibility, as both a thinker and as an activist, that defines the role of the intellectual, alone neither serves the individual or the community. Knowledge without action—to know but not act—and it’s opposite, action without knowledge—to act without understanding—not only hinders progress, but jeopardizes what has been achieved. The Intellectual must be both the curious investigator and the courageous instigator.

Essay Notes/Outline/Draft

Are intellectuals exiles, or are exiles intellectuals?

That is, if an intellectual questions the norms are they exiled by the mainstream authorities? Or is it, if you live in exile, do you become an intellectual as you question based on the duel perspectives of where you are and where you were?

Subject for Essay: Exile or Truth?

I’ve been thinking a lot about my first writing assignment for Seminar, and was initially thinking about Edward Said’s role of the exile. I was wondering if the exile can still exist considering todays open communities. One of Said’s observations was that the exiled individual is removed from both the physical and metaphysical world. Most obvious is the physical exile, in that they can be physically removed, for example, from an organization and no longer able to attend functions, or from a country, unable to participate in government/society.